page_title: Ocean Conservancy
section_title: International Coastal Cleanup
hierarchical_section_title: Ocean Conservancy / Accomplishments / International Coastal Cleanup
caption_attribution_description: A photo of a group of volunteers who helped clean up beaches and estuaries around Anacostia Park. The Ocean Conservancy, formerly known as the Center for Marine Conservation, established and maintains the annual International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) with support from EPA and other stakeholders. The first cleanup was in 1986 in Texas, and the campaign currently involves all of the states and territories of the United States and more than 100 countries around the world. The ICC is the largest volunteer environmental data-gathering effort and associated cleanup of coastal and underwater areas in the world. It takes place every year on the third Saturday in September. In 2001, over 140,000 people across the U.S. participated in the ICCC. They removed about 3.6 million pounds of debris from more than 7,700 miles of coasts, shorelines, and underwater sites.
context_page_description: Ocean Conservancy is a nonprofit environmental advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., United States. The organization helps formulate ocean policy at the federal and state government levels based on peer reviewed science.
context_section_description: One of the Ocean Conservancy's concerns involves setting up ocean cleanups, an event where volunteers can gather to remove trash from their local oceans. Their main event is the International Coastal Cleanup, a day where over 150 countries gather to clean up beaches and oceans. The movement was created by Linda Maraniss and Kathy O'Hara in 1986 when they organized the Ocean Conservancy's first local cleanup event.  Since this first cleanup, Ocean Conservancy has helped to pick up over 300 million pounds of trash from the ocean.  Scientists have confirmed that about 8 million metric tons of plastic are added to oceans every year, prompting the International Coastal Cleanup to take place and expand every year. In order to easily track the trash being picked up, Ocean Conservancy launched an app called Clean Swell in 2015. The user is allowed to log and photograph the trash they pick up and the information is then sent to the Ocean Conservancy's global trash database.
caption: Group of volunteers participating in an ocean clean up run by Ocean Conservancy.
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